Read about microphones and more general mixer and home studio stuff.

I read about how microphones work. I now understand what phantom power is about. I also read about patch bays and how these work for normalised and non-normalised patch bays. The normalised are for effects sends.

I am interested in buying a Behringer Patch Bay 2000. I can afford one of these new but there is no rush to buy one just yet. I am buying a compressor, limiter and gate all in one Behringer Composer. I am slowly cleaning up my office and thinking of where I will place my old eMac, the mixer, and monitors etc. etc.. The idea is to place all the stuff in accessible locations so one can operate all the connections. The patch bay means you don't have to go behind everything to change cables. There is room for this gear but there may be limited space for performers.

But this has got me thinking that perhaps the home studio is one set up and the rental PA will be another set up. Then combined, these would be a larger single set up. I will see about picking up a Peavey Unity mixer this week for the rental PA. Also I need to buy some balanced cables for all this meaning short cables for the patch bay and also cables for the rental PA system. Also the eMac will need an external USB hard drive for recording and archiving but this item can wait and it would actually be cheaper to wait for these hard drives to come down in price. Also I have investigated receivers and monitor speakers from Future shop. I would use this for play back in the home studio.

Speaking of stereo set ups, I have set up our living room stereo fine now. I can also listen to my iPod on the living room stereo. The cassette player, the DVD/VHS, and TV are all working fine.